Planning Commission Regular Meeting/Work Session

Good evening. Welcome to the regularly scheduled meeting for the City of Fairfax Planning Commission for Monday, January 12, 2026. Happy New Year. Welcome back to a year of activity for us. First order of business is the Pledge of Allegiance. Please join me. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Next order of business is discussion and adoption of the agenda. The agenda was issued ahead of time as required. Are there any comments on the agenda? Mr. Chairman, I move the agenda be adopted as presented. Seconded. It's been moved and seconded to adopt the agenda as presented. All those in favor say aye.

Aye. Opposed? Abstentions passes unanimously. Next order of business is presentations by the public on any matter not calling for a public hearing. We're seeing no one wanting to speak. We will move on to the next item on the agenda. Consideration of the December 8, 2025 meeting minutes. Those also were issued ahead of the meeting as required. Are there any comments, corrections, or additions? Ms. Lockhart. Mr. Chair, I move that we adopt the meeting minutes from December 8, 2025 regular meeting as provided. Second. It's been moved and seconded to adopt the minutes as issued. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? None. Abstentions? Passes unanimously. Next item on the agenda are items not requiring a public hearing.

We will hold elections as are required for the officers for the Planning Commission for the coming year and deal with appointments from boards and commissions and some other business. For the first item, nomination and election of chair and vice chair, I will turn the process over to our esteemed chair emeritus, Mr. Cunningham. Thank you, Mr. Feather. At this time, we will open nominations for the position of chair of the Planning Commission. Are there any nominations for chair? Mr. Rice. Yeah, Mr. Cunningham. We've had a very smooth three or four years under Mr. Feather's leadership. I would like to nominate Mr. Feather to serve as chair for the upcoming year. Okay. We have a nomination. Do we have a second?

I second the motion. We have a nomination and a second. Do we have any additional nominations for the chair position? Seeing none, I will close the nominations. And at this time, we will take a voice vote on the election of Mr. Feather as chair. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? And abstentions? Mr. Chair, congratulations. Mr. Feather, congratulations on being re-elected chair of the Planning Commission. Thank you. We will now move into the nomination and election of the Vice Chair. I will open the floor to nominations for the position of Vice Chair. Do we have any nominations? I move to nominate Kirsten Lockhart as Vice Chair of the Planning Commission. Second. Second. We have a nomination and a second.

Do we have any additional nominations? Then I will close the nominations and we will call for, again, a voice vote. All in favor of Ms. Lockhart as vice chair, signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? дедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедеде mentioned previously, I'd agree to continue serving as the bar representative.

We'll need a nomination for that unless Mr. McCarthy or somebody would like to fill in, but we can talk later about picking up when I'm not going to be able to serve. I move that Mr. Feather be nominated as the representative from the Planning Commission to the Board of Architecture Review. All right. Any others? No nominations? I think there are none. So I'm happy to continue serving on prep if anyone wants to nominate. We'll vote on the bar first and then do that. All those in favor of my appointment back to the bar, signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Passes unanimously. Nominations for the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board. Mr. Rice has agreed to serve. He's done wonderfully.

I nominate Mr. Rice for reappointment as the representative to the Parks and Rec Advisory Board. Second. Moved and seconded to appoint Mr. Rice, the good Dr. Rice, to the Parks and Rec Advisory Board. Are there other nominations? Seeing none, voice vote please. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Passes unanimously. Thank you for agreeing to continue to serve Mr. Rice. Next order of business is review of the Planning Commission bylaws. We have a brief staff report by Mr. Napty. Thank you, Chair Feather, members of the Planning Commission. The bylaws are required to be reviewed every two years as stated by the bylaws. And so these were last reviewed in January of 2024. The bylaws are included in your staff report.

So hopefully you had a chance to take a look through those and see if you want to make any amendments. As stated in the staff report, the last changes to the bylaws were made in 2022. But before that, no changes have been made since 2012. The changes that were made in 2022 related to the remote participation policy, which was fairly new at that time. There have been changes to state code to include that. And there are some requirements about how that had to operate. So we incorporated those to the bylaws. And then the Planning Commissioners had some other recommended changes based on the way things had changes in operation over the course of the years. So the rest of those listed there were all requests that were made by the Planning Commissioners.

So I will turn it over to the Planning Commission to see if there are any portions of the bylaws that you would like to consider changing this year. I'll open up for comments or ideas or thoughts from the Commissioners. I have no comments or need to make changes. I believe they're adequate as they stand at the moment. Thoughts from others? I did send a question to Mr. Napty that may require a little bit of research. But I don't think it's anything that warrants a particular change right now. A little bit of clarity may be appropriate at some point in the future related to the kinds of things that the Planning Commission reviews. Let me just look at my exact words. Under responsibilities, the bylaws state that the Commission is to review new streets and public buildings and infrastructure for conformity with the comprehensive plan.

I noted that new streets does not say public streets. So at some point, we thought it might be good to get a clarification on whether that's to include both public and private streets or not. Since public buildings and infrastructure specifically called out, the streets does not say public or otherwise. So Mr. Napty agreed to have a conversation with the city attorney to see what the real intent might be. But that could be just a brief clarification that might be needed in the future. There aren't that many private streets that go in with developments in the city that we don't see. There are some. When I think of the Courthouse Plaza case, there are some new private streets. But, you know, that project didn't move ahead anyway.

So I think there's time to work this out. And if needed, we can amend the bylaws to be very clear in what our scope is. But other than that, there was nothing else from my standpoint. Sluckert. Feel free to completely shut down this line of questioning. But would this be an opportunity to include some sort of instruction about make recommendations with regards to parcel-specific recommendations? It depends how we want to reference it. So I don't know if the bylaws are the appropriate place for that because the parcel-specific recommendations have their own process, identify the comprehensive plan that follows other processes that the Planning Commission uses to review projects, which are stated in the bylaws.

You know, I would see basically the parcel-specific recommendations as a piece of the comprehensive plan. And this already says that the Planning Commission shall review the comprehensive plan. If we wanted to add more detail, we could consider. But is there something specific you're thinking of of how you want it to be addressed? Well, I mean, we sort of left it open-ended of whether we had a process to designate a parcel as eligible outside what's currently written into the comp plan. Okay. So do we have – is this a place that we could include an entry gate? And shall make recommendations with regards to the designation of an eligible parcel? My preference – we could certainly add something like that in here.

My preference would be that we have a separate discussion on what that process looks like. We can review the bylaws at any time. It doesn't have to be only in these two-year cycles. So if we have a separate discussion and decide for the purpose of parcel-specific recommendations, Planning Commission initiates and makes a recommendation and so on, once we have that, then I think it would be more appropriate to get it into the bylaws once it's been identified. Sure. I mean, reading through this, it can be equally appropriate in city code. You know, bylaws might not have been the right place to start, but I just wondered if it was worth including as a responsibility, if we want to claim that responsibility for ourselves.

Yeah. Yeah, to make it very clear because there was some uncertainty as to whether an applicant could seek a change to the comprehensive plan to include a parcel that we had not identified. It's probably worth maybe taking one more step further on that. Other thoughts on that? Mr. Rice. So the bylaws do leave a latitude for us to have some responsibility designated by city council. So if the city councilor and mayor thought it was a good idea for us to start doing this, they just need to tell us. And the bylaws make it clear that if it's in accordance with applicable law, we're not violating any state laws by doing so, we can do it. So at this point, we may take that as a follow-up but not make a change currently.

Is that the consensus? Okay. I have a question on your previous point in looking at our review of private streets. I would take it back a couple of planning commission chairs, which is going to take it back a number of years, when the council chose to remove the planning commission from the review of major redevelopment issues, if there was not a major zoning change involved or some other things like that. I believe the planning commission at that time and has ever since had an open request to the city council to be included on those kinds of reviews. The two projects that were just talked about with private streets, Courthouse Plaza and another where private streets were included in developments that the planning commission was not going to look at,

I think would be included if we were looking at all of the major changes and redevelopments that that request had made. So when we talk about just private streets, I think you're also opening the issue again of us looking at major redevelopments such as Courthouse Plaza rather than doing them in isolation. And I believe the Davies property fell into portions of that reconsideration at times when we're dealing with substandard streets and other things in developments. So that I think the planning commission's ability to look at those kinds of developments is important. And being excluded from that process has unintended consequences as was just discussed. So I think addressing both of those issues might give us some clarity and looking at all the major redevelopments that go on in the city to help us better perform our role in looking at what those things are.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good topics for follow-up. No changes we'd like to propose for this evening now. There's no other discussion. Is there a motion to address the bylaws in our annual review? Mr. Chair, I move that the planning commission adopt the planning commission bylaws as provided in attachment one of the staff memorandum dated 12 January 2026. Is there a second? I second the motion. It's been moved and seconded. Is there any further discussion on the motion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Passes unanimously. Thank you. Next order of business is the required annual review of our remote participation policy. Mr. Naphte, would you like to comment? Yes, this is a relatively new ask of the planning commission.

There are changes made in the state code in 2024 that required that all boards and commissions review and adopt new remote participation policies every year as long as they are going to continue to operate with the assumption that remote participation is allowed and conformed to a state code. So, last year, 2025 was the first time that you had done this. You had previously adopted your remote participation policy but hadn't had to review it before. There were a couple of changes last year based on those changes to the state code that happened in 2024. There were no changes to the state code this last year and those are really the types of things that would trigger a change to a remote participation policy.

There are a lot of rules we have to follow so we don't recommend that we make any changes to this with the risk of not being in conformance with state code. However, this is here for your review. If there's anything that you would like to consider for changing, you're welcome to do that now. Otherwise, the state code requires that you take action whether you change it or not and approve the remote participation policy for the coming year. So, I'll turn it over to the planning commission for discussion. Thank you. Any questions or comments for staff or proposed changes to the policy? Okay. Ms. Lutter? Mr. Chair, I move that the planning commission adopt the planning commission remote participation policy as provided in attachment one of the staff memorandum dated 12 January 2026.

Mr. Chair, I move and seconded to adopt the policy as provided. Any further discussion? All those in favor, say aye, please. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Passes unanimously. All right. Next door of business, public hearings. We have none this evening. So, we will recess our regular meeting and go into our work session, which is our continued discussion on the proposed fiscal year 2027. The 2031 capital improvement program. Mr. Napty. Thank you again, Chair Feather and members of the planning commission. This process has been underway since November when you received a presentation from the acting city manager on the draft capital improvement program at that time. You since held several discussions to begin to develop recommendations to be presented to city council, the last one being on December 8th.

So, for today, we will continue that discussion with the goal of drafting some or preparing some draft recommendations to be ready for a public hearing at your next meeting, January 26th, which is already scheduled. We will then ask planning commissioners to come to the city council work session on February 3rd to present your recommendations. So, the goal for today, again, is to get these to the point where we have draft recommendations. They don't have to be worded perfectly. We can continue to work with them, work on them in the past. Staff has taken your recommendations and worked with the chair to refine them and then emailed them out for any further changes, but have always been ready with the final recommendations before the public hearing.

So, that's what we would do today. We have, at the request of the planning commission representatives from the fire department and parks and recreation here as well. So, if you have questions for them, feel free to ask some of them. I will quickly go through a reminder of the planning commission's role and also remind you of some of the major topics that came up at the December 8th meeting, because we started to get into what we thought some of the recommendations might be at that time. A reminder of the commission's role, as defined in the city code, is to determine conformance of the capital improvement program with the comprehensive plan, as you are the overseers of the comprehensive plan.

This can be done on a number of levels. One is to determine conformance of individual projects with the comprehensive plan. And we've already talked about how those are identified in the capital improvement program. A second way is to advise council on city priorities among proposed projects. City council is always in the position of having to choose which projects to recommend to be supported in conformance with the proposed capital improvement program. And the planning commission can help them with that by helping prioritize projects based on how important they are in the comprehensive plan. And then lastly, to anticipate future considerations. This is kind of the inverse of the first recommendation is to make sure that projects that are in the capital improvement program are being planned for and not being omitted.

A summary of your conversation on December 8th. We included a summary of the comments that we heard in your staff report, and those were broken up into three categories. The first is general capital comments. A lot of the comments that the planning commission typically provides to city council are general comments to help them prioritize rather than focusing on specific projects. They identify what priority should be, what is most important in the comprehensive plan, and those types of things. And we'll show you some examples. Second is project specific comments. These are comments where planning commissioners mentioned a specific project, whether it should be supported or had questions about it.

And then lastly, there were general financial comments. These are comments that really discussed things such as the city's financial standing and financial planning over the long term and those types of things. Not the type of comments that we recommend to be included in the planning commission recommendations, but we included them in your staff report as a reference because they could help you determine what your recommendations will be and help prioritize projects. And just to show how this breaks down, this is color coded. These are a, this is a summary of the recommendations that you provided to city council last year. Not the exact wording. The exact wording is in your staff report. But this, these, these were summarized into bullet points.

And the color coding here shows the type of recommendation that was provided. And you can see that all the blues are the general capital recommendations. This is where the planning commission provided a general statement to help guide city council in their decision making. And then the orange ones were specific projects. And you can see last year we only had one specific project that was mentioned in the planning commission's comments. So to start off the general financial comments, these are the ones that we don't recommend. You provide as formal recommendations, but are here for guidance. Some things we heard December 8th is that the city has a competitive tax rate and there is value in living in the city.

Second, that rating criteria from bond rating agencies focuses on ongoing costs over capital investment. This was in relation to concerns that were raised about how the capital improvement program could infect our bond ratings. And then lastly, that many current financial obligations are a result of deferred improvements. This was a result of a comment we heard at a previous work session asking about the significant increase in the overall amount of the capital improvement program between now and around 10 years ago. And the response we heard from the chief financial officer said there were a lot of projects that had to come about now because they had not been started earlier. The second group of comments, general capital comments, these are the more the general comments that are intended to help guide council rather than to focus on a specific project.

Some of the things we heard December 8th were to support external funding and seek new external funding opportunities. You may recall we had a similar comment to this with the resolution that went to city council last year. Another comment to leverage city owned properties to offset costs for other projects. So to use city owned properties as a way to increase revenues or to provide opportunities to for facilities to be located. There's a general comment to invest in what makes people want to live here. And there was a comment to consider long term changes when prioritizing short term partial improvements. The example that was provided with this comment was the fueling station at the property yard recognizing that the property yard has a larger feasibility study and will likely be relocated in the future.

So the question was, how can we think about this investment, particularly the fueling station, so that we aren't investing too much into it, knowing that it's going to likely move or be relocated at some point in the future. And then lastly, project specific comments. These are the comments that address a specific project in the CIP. The first one, we had a couple comments and questions about the timing for the Van Dyke master plan implementation. We had comments about this project, as we mentioned last year. The comment last year was that the Van Dyke park improvements are specifically identified in the comprehensive plan and that the Planning Commission continues to support that. But based on the other priorities that are developing in the CIP, this was one that the Planning Commission felt could have been deferred and that was deferred in the CIP, but it's now coming up again with recommended funding this year.

Timing for the property yard redevelopment on how urgent it is. We heard comments about questioning whether this could be delayed. We also heard comments saying that delaying it would increase costs by deferring maintenance. We had comments to suggest that we look for alternative funding for school facility improvements. This is, I believe, was based on the hope that there would be changes to the state code that allow us to leverage additional resources to fund school facilities. General comments to support stormwater and wastewater projects. There are questions about the timing and scale of the Fire Station 3 replacement project. There was general support for the West Drive property yard acquisition project with the statement that these types of opportunities don't come along very often and are limited so we can take advantage of it while we can.

There were comments multiple commissioners supported continued investment in the Willard Sherwood Community Center. And the Planning Commissioner may recall there was a general comment last year about continuing investment in projects that we have already taken so far. And then there were general questions about the cost and need for some of the turf conversion projects that are identified in the CIP. So that's where we are now. I just want to remind you about where we left things off. As I mentioned, we would like to get to the point where we can start preparing some draft language and I have some slides here. We can start doing that. You can see as we type things in. As I mentioned, we don't have to have everything ironed out tonight.

We just want to get some general language and we can continue to tweak that over the next couple of days. But before we get into doing that, I'd ask that we start with questions, especially recognizing that we have our guests here, Stacy Summerfield from Parks and Recreation and Sean Dunstan from the Fire Department. If you have questions for them, then we should get through those first before we start trying to develop language. So that's all we have for the staff report today. Thank you, Mr. Napty. Questions from the dais. Mr. Rice. So I'd like to ask a question to both of our guests in the audience. If we could start with Parks, that would be helpful. We talked about a variety of issues. My role as the liaison to PRAB means that I attempt to provide summaries of projects and the importance of the projects.

And I think that it would be more helpful if they heard it again from a more qualified person to make the statements. So a few things. I'd like to hear about the connection between the Van Dyke Master Plan, which is something that we've supported strongly, the Willard Sherwood and the Willard Sherwood and how those two things are connected and any sequencing that would happen between the two projects and any dependencies between the two. And I might add the Blanton Boulevard Master Plan as well. There is some integration there. Yes. First of all, thank you for having me. I'm Stacy Summerfield. I'm the Parks Director. And yes, so you'll notice in the CIP we have the Van Dyke Master Plan has been pushed back a little.

That was because of the desire to complete the design and to kind of know the final look of the Willard Sherwood project. One of the things that I know you're all aware of, but the Willard Sherwood building includes the Senior Center moving to that location. And so we have quite a vibrant senior population, about 1,500 members. Right now we're gaining about 40 members a month. And so if we move to that location, they're moving away from Green Acres, which certainly is an outdated building, but Green Acres also has pickleball on site, bocce on site outdoors. And so it does move where we would be looking for the Van Dyke remodel. It would change the population that's using that a bit. And so thinking about the ways that that connects that building to the park.

Additionally, there's four children's classrooms on the first floor for youth programming. And so how we connect that building over to Van Dyke, because there is a connected outdoor playground, but it's not an outdoor space like Van Dyke to take kids over to a more natural playscape. And so that has been the impetus behind us moving the Van Dyke master plan out, is so that we know really what the site adjacent to Van Dyke will look like, as well as the traffic patterns of that. Of course, it's going to be bringing a lot more people to that site, and how traffic flows through the site. There was a master plan, our master planning process was started in 2018 for Van Dyke. And in that design, it did move the parking lot out of the center of the park

and slide it over towards Sherwood. So now that we know what the parking and traffic movement through the site will look like with the Willard Sherwood building, that'll help us consider the parking for Van Dyke as well. And then we have also been working hand in hand with the Blenheim Boulevard project, currently looking at how we can make sure our signage matches up. There's a complete signage plan that's developed for that pedestrian signage, letting people know where amenities are along Blenheim. And then matching that up with we also have a signage project rolling out in the parks that's updating park signage to be more inclusive of multiple languages, visual impairments. And so making sure that those two match up.

One of the other big pieces that came out of the 2018 master planning process, which ended because of COVID. So we would look at kind of the community feedback we got there, but then we would engage in a full new master planning process for the park. Because of course, 2018 was before pickleball became a thing, and now it is a huge thing for our community members. So we would be restarting the master planning process, but that master plan showed more of a pedestrian connection to Van Dyke Park. So instead of utilizing kind of the central entrance there the way it is now for mostly cars, limited sidewalks, it would be more interconnected with the Blenheim Boulevard project. So that pedestrian connection for us is also a big piece.

Going back even further, we've heard over the last decade plans for Leighton Hall redevelopment, and we've just talked about Courthouse Plaza. So the idea was a central walkable corridor that would take people from the center of town, Old Town Square, Courthouse Plaza, and be able to have them walk or travel directly up through the center of that block into Van Dyke Park and to St. Leo's and to everything beyond. So I appreciate your comments, expertly delivered and concise, much better than I ever have done as the representative. But importantly, the connection between Willard Sherwood and the park is substantial. The senior center and most of their recreational activities may take place in Van Dyke.

And there's been years of discussion about this. We have known for over a decade that Green Acres is not able to be renovated to serve a useful function as a city facility without hundreds, a million. I don't even know the right numbers. They're atmospheric. But in order to bring the building up to standards, it's just not conceivable. And so I appreciate you discussing the connection. We've already spent millions of dollars. The county has outlaid huge amounts of money already on this project. And I very, very much want both of these things, the Van Dyke master plan and the Willard Sherwood Center to continue. I think it's difficult imagining the amount of time and effort invested by the summer fell than her predecessors and and then just doing a U-turn on the Willard Sherwood and by extension requiring a complete rethink of Van Dyke park.

So we lose a whole lot more than just our relationship and money with the county. We lose the progress and a united vision of what Van Dyke park will be in the future. So thank you very much. I don't have any other questions. Maybe my colleagues do. Others for parks. Mr. Gunnigan. Thank you, Mr. Summerfield. As a user of the senior center of Green Acres, I believe it may be some time before I transition to my new place of recreation. And as such, I am hopeful that we keep Green Acres up at least in a usable condition until I can get to that stage. If it happens in my timeframe. Mr. Gunnigan. I think it's been an excellent process. Sometime before 2018, the planning commission spent three years in a row trying to encourage the city council to actually adopt a master plan for Van Dyke park.

And the city council was reluctant. Since the adoption ultimately of a master plan, we've gone through a number of iterations. And not only for Van Dyke park, but it seems that master planning has become the activity du jour to get anything accomplished in the city. If we're going to do it, we set out with a master plan for what we're going to do. So we now complete a significant number of master plans. And I don't know that we have a review process to find out how many of them get completed and end up on the shelf. Because they were a good thought process, but they're never integrated and adopted. And how many actually are implemented in the form in which they're developed and adopted because of the time legs between doing master plans and moving forward.

And from that standpoint, I would ask, is there a way we can look at the master planning process now, such as Van Dyke, and find a streamlined way to make it efficient to continue working and including the modifications to get to the goal of doing some of this? Because hopefully, or ideally, I guess, we would get a master plan and we would go out and we would implement it. And I think our experience, especially with the Van Dyke master plan, says that we have kept the issue alive and well. But we have had to deal with a lot of change as we moved along this process and we're not done yet. I think there are two things that can really help us. One, I appreciate the way the Van Dyke CIP is laid out in that there is master planning funding built into the process as well as implementation funding.

I think I have a number of, or the Parks Department has a number of master plans that the planning is funded, but then the actual implementation of the park is not. And so, I agree with you. I think sometimes it happens where we come up with a great plan, but then it's never implemented mostly due to money. The reason I came in late tonight is that we are in the process of building a Parks Foundation. So, I was over at that meeting. And I think that is something that can, it was a big topic of discussion tonight because we, of course, are finishing the redevelopment of Theis Park. So, talking about how we can leverage private dollars through naming rights and a number of different avenues in order to help offset the cost of implementing some of these master plans.

We also have a funded master plan to look at the Westmore School site. Of course, there's no funding for implementation afterwards, but I think ideally we can build a robust Parks Foundation that would help us leverage private dollars so that we can come in looking at a realistic kind of cost share between the city and the Parks Foundation, being able to offset some of those costs. Okay. And I would commend you on pursuing that. I know when Sherwood was constructed, it was done on a gift from the estate of the Sherwood family. It covered a specific amount, $5 million worth of construction. And then there was still a needed input to the building to make other things. So, we have a number of tiles out in the Sherwood entryway indicating that people had made contributions to that and they were recognized in that way.

So, I think that may follow on with what you were trying to do with Ty East Park and other things. In looking at Ty East Park as it's coming along, we're taking some old ball fields and we're going to get a first class recreational facility when we're done. So, I think it meets our goal when we implement master plans to take existing facilities and give us something that is excellent that the community will honor, will use, and will use for a very long period of time because they will be functional for a long period of time and pay back that investment in the utility and benefit. I think if there were other ways, and I'll commend you on getting a foundation which will help move some of this along because moving costs out of the budget and out of some of this in order to maintain control of tax rates while still making progress, I know, is a value and a goal of the city at this time.

I think that's probably what I have to say because I know that the progress is slow. I don't know that it ties into any existing project with parks and rec at the moment, but I think your input and continued input on what's functional master planning and what's not will be useful as we move forward. Thank you. Other questions? One of the other topics that had come up in our discussion at our last meeting, which was last December, was also about the Katherine Johnson Middle School fields. Would you like to comment on those, on that project as well? That's a fairly substantial project that's coming up as well. I know there's a turf field replacement at the high school as well, which I don't think involves parks so much.

No, thankfully that was moved out of our budget and into the schools, which I appreciate, but it comes out of the city regardless. Yeah, that's a replacement for an aging turf. Right. But over at KJ, we do have a potential design. We worked with the middle school staff there quite closely looking at their needs. From the Parks and Rec City perspective, there is a lot of demand for turf field access, largely because natural turf requires time in order to be playing, playable following rain events and in different weather conditions. And so the design for KJ includes, it's in the space in between Kuttner Park and Katherine Johnson. So it is a space that the Parks Department maintains. Our field manager, Rich Wyant, is the person who books those spaces along in conjunction with the school.

When we met with the KJ staff, they are launching middle school sports. So what they require is they have a cross country program that needs to be able to practice within the confines of the school. They cannot leave the school grounds. And then a track and field program. So their biggest asks were if they could redo the track that is closest to, oh yeah, we're looking at the overhead here. Closest to the school, there is an existing gravel track that's not a defined, it's not a standard size. So they have to run, I think, like three and three quarters lap. They don't start and end in the same place. So they were interested in getting a standard size track. The other ask from facility or from faculty members at the school was to have a paved area in the center of the track that could be used to play, again, pickleball.

A number of different sports that require a hard court surface that they would play outdoors. And then a perimeter walking track, which when you look at our facilities within the city, the walking tracks are one of the most highly used pieces of assets in the neighborhoods. Because people like to come over and walk at a defined amount to figure out how long they've walked. So the site design features two lit turf fields, a perimeter walking track that is hard pack gravel, a rubberized track surface, and a paved area in the middle of the track. So the site had some significant challenges because the fill at the site is largely made up out of the old Lanier School when it was torn down, went in there.

So we will often have bricks come up to the surface. We've had a toilet come up before that our staff went out and dug up. So there are some challenges with the actual site with the fill. And then there are a lot of stormwater challenges because it's unclear, and when you look at it from above, but there's a pretty significant grade drop from the site of the Katherine Johnson School down into the field. And so it tends to be a very wet area that water accumulates. So looking at how we can move stormwater off the site, store stormwater in heavy rain events. The other thing that's included in the estimate for the site is the creation of permanent restroom facilities at Kuttner Park. And then looking at different ways to add additional parking.

There's a pretty difficult parking shortage when there's a lot of games happening down there. And then working with transportation, there is a long-term plan to move the light at Germantown so that the exit for Kuttner matches up with that light down there. So when that space is created, how can we utilize that for parking and drop off? So it is a large plan. The estimate was $10 million, so it's quite expensive. And unfortunately, a lot of that money goes into site work to resolve the fill and stormwater problems. But for the $10 million, it does provide all the assets requested by the middle school and by the community. And the current condition of the facility, how disruptive has it been to programs for the schools, the parks?

It is difficult. It is unfortunate when it's raining. They cannot utilize that field. It becomes quite wet. In fact, we went out there to meet with our turf specialists after it rained quite heavily. And there's about two to three inches of standing water on the field that takes quite a while to dissipate. And so the middle school, along with wanting the additional assets for the middle school sports, would also like to have a reliable field to utilize for PE classes, as well as school, middle school sports, would include soccer. So we're looking at lining for soccer, field hockey, and then you can see the original proposal also included baseball diamond to be utilized for softball and baseball.

Questions? Mr. Rice. Yeah, the grade change on the Katherine Johnson site and the drainage issue you mentioned creates a really difficult accessibility issue. So the stairs don't have a significant landing space. And once you are off the concrete, it's just mushy grass. And because I do professional work in accessibility in my other job, I frequently get pictures of the site when it's waterlogged. And, you know, grandparents with their walkers or students in wheelchairs is just, it's really not a place that's inviting. It's real difficult. Getting from the other side is a little easier. Getting from the school is not simple at all. So it's complex. I admire you endlessly. I tell everybody, Stacey has one of the most complex jobs in the city.

Just the sheer number of projects and the budgets and the personnel that's rectifying problems that, you know, are from three decades ago when the school was demolished. Yeah, these are unfortunate things. But you've captured the complexity of this one. There was a reaction right away. A turf field. Well, that should be a million. You know, why is this 10 million? Yeah, this is really a $10 million project. It's complicated. So, thank you for your explanation. I appreciate it. Yeah, no, thank you. We did work hard on this one to also, it is only two youth-sized fields. I should point that out. They are not full-sized soccer fields because we work to maintain that wooded barrier and not cut into the trees.

And then the gravel pathway on the outside, we looked at different materials that could be used, like the hexagonal tiles that the gravel goes in so that we're not compressing the dirt for the roots for that tree line. And the goal of removing as few trees as possible. So, this isn't project specific, but just to our note about messaging, you know, when we go back with our comments. I was at a facility in Stafford this weekend that has an Olympic-sized pool and maybe a dozen turf fields and negligible indoor gym space. Really, those are the two marquee facilities. And it brings in, most recently, $12 million a year in revenue. So, just emphasizing that these park projects are revenue-generating projects.

They're for the benefit of the city, but they also do pay for themselves back relatively quickly in terms of usage, especially in such a sports crazy environment. So, you know, making sure that our comments sort of emphasize that, you know, we understand these are expensive. However, you know, asterisks next to the ones that will pay themselves back. Yeah, I have one question. I've actually gone for quite a few walks in the path around there, and there's some, like, wetland areas. Have you guys considered, like, you know, I imagine those two to three inches of pooling water have to be moved somewhere? Has that been looked at, and is that addressed in that number? So, there are vernal pools within the wooded area in Kuttner Park.

In fact, some of them are specifically created to manage some of the stormwater on the site. So, looking at the amount, the volume of water that's coming down into that area, it can't fully be managed by the wetland area in the tree, but we, in the trees, we, but we've looked at, you know, how to move it off the site or how to store it on the site in such a way that it doesn't overwhelm that low-lying area like it does right now. Mr. Cunningham. Mr. Cunningham. Thank you. I know Parks and Rec also borders on the city's trails, and I know some of the trails are very controversial at this point, and I know others are under discussion for how they are going to be completed. Where do trails stand in terms of CIP for the ones not on the hottest burner in terms of the George Schneider Trail for the rest of the city?

Well, we're very lucky to have a great working relationship with transportation, and so currently the model is that transportation utilizing a lot of grant dollars builds the trails, and then city parks and recreation maintains them. So really, our funding currently goes towards maintaining the trail assets that we have now and replacing bridges, doing a number of things there, and the CIP funds to build the new trails are coming out of transportation. Okay. Yeah. And do we have any issue with building? I know when we talk bridges on trails in the city, when I see the bridges that are proposed for the George Schneider Trail, they do not seem to be in the same cost realm with the city's bridges for the rest of the city.

I know the city's bridges are supposed to be motorcycle capable of handling a police motorcycle so that they are accessible, which means they're structured to hold reasonable weight, but they're not in the same league with the industrial strength trail bridges that we're otherwise talking about. So are we compatible with our bridges? I know they've been built a number of years ago and we're coming along. Is that something that's an issue we should be looking at here? Two things. I think first we are working for parks to look at an asset management system where we can put, we are reaching points where our assets are aging out. And you'll see in our CIP we have funds dedicated towards the park's facelift project, playground replacement, and so those asset replacements.

But I think having a larger asset management program is something that we're invested in seeing come online, hopefully within the next year or two. And then with the bridges, the cost is much higher than it used to be, for sure. And I do think we are now, you know, what passed in the past is no longer workable now because we are looking at ways to get, for us, we have a small bobcat which takes materials out. You know, it's easier than carting in loads of gravel by hand. And so to be able to have bridges that can support those sorts of small machinery items for parks makes the work much more efficient for us. So I think you do see more robust bridges in the replacement. But we also look at different opportunities.

We have a replacement project right now on the judicial trail where we're taking an older bridge that's reached the end of its life and replacing it with a large culvert and just bringing the whole trail over it because it's a very short span. And so being able to look at different options. And then, you know, really thinking about accessibility and so making sure that the option that we're putting in is as accessible as possible. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Anything else for parks? Ms. Somerville, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule and being with us this evening. It's been very helpful. Perfect. Thank you. Fill in some of our knowledge gaps. If you have any questions, no problem if I need to come back.

So thank you so much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Next. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Thank you for joining us. Good evening. Would you mind giving us just a quick sort of overview of where the department is in the planning for the Station 33 replacement? Station 33, yeah. Station 33 replaced a couple years ago. Yes. Sorry. Station 3. The one closest to my house. Yeah, sure. First, this is my, in 20, almost 24 years, this is my first planning commission meeting. So I'm excited to be here and meet you guys and see you guys. So thank you for that. Chief, Chief O'Neill sends his regards. He's in Colorado and cold snowy Colorado. He's been the point man for this project with directly working with our project manager, but I'm going to, I'm going to do my best to fill in for him and I may have to get you some answers.

I'm going to get some answers back to you. But we, the feasibility study was in 2022, which I shared with Mr. Napty earlier is, I don't believe you guys, we've shared the feasibility study report of Station 3. So you can see the aging mechanical, the plumbing, etc. It may be valuable for you guys to see and answer some of your questions about the current condition of Station 3. And that was almost four years ago now. So where we're at currently is we've completed the conceptual design. And there was a question at one point, rather, are fire marshals were going to move over or not. So we've gone back and forth on that and depending who the city manager is, Chief O'Neill's been working with the city manager to kind of iron that out.

But essentially our conceptual design is complete. So now, now I believe the council has directed Chief O'Neill and procurement to work for PPEA and get some information to see if there's any interest in that. So was there a requirements doctor, like document that was developed to that inform that design, like a con ops kind of? Yeah. So that was part of the feasibility study, which then led us to purchasing or the city to purchasing the foundation, GMU foundation building next to us. We purchased that. And then as, as that was ongoing, we were continuing to work on the conceptual design. So, so yes, all of that was done, but that was part of the feasibility study, which I can share all that information with you.

Okay. So the reason I'm asking is obviously we're also talking about the property yard, which hosts some emergency management functions that are going to need to be relocated somewhere. Yeah. So, you know, is there blank space or swing space that maybe some of those can be rolled into the fire station or has that not been put on the table? That was not presented. I know that was not presented, but I think any of that could, could definitely be looked at. I know there are some limitations, which I may lean on Mr. Napty for this, but there's some limitation on height. So we were already maxed out on height, but additional office space, there may be some availability for that. Okay. And then my other question is I've learned recently that there may be some changes to the city's fire station demand signal based on the county actions.

Namely that three is now the primary station responding to Woodley chase in addition to George Mason. That is correct. Yeah. So do we ever qualify for any sort of like co-investment from the county when, when the bulk of the calls are going to be going to, to county assets or that's, that's something we look at on a regular basis on, on a monthly basis and then quarterly basis and annual basis about how many calls that the county's answering for us in the city, how many calls we're answering for them. So, so we look at that and evaluate that and why there has been increased demand on, on some units going to Woodley chase. There's also additional units from Fairfax County coming in to the city.

Okay. Yeah. I know it's all covered in our mutual aid, but I heard the reason for Woodley chase is part of location, but also partially because the closest responding county agent station doesn't have a tower unit. No, that's not true. It all goes by mileage, mileage and, or I'm sorry, mileage and speed limit is factored into there. So, so there's a, they use GIS and look at it that way. Yeah. It just struck me as those are sort of two different demand signal changes, maybe from the last time that a study was done. And as you know, is it incorporated in the plans? It is. Yeah. We built in, uh, we, we built in capacity for that in the conceptual design. Thank you. Others? Mr. Rice. Yeah. I've talked to chief O'Neill a few times about this.

I think it would be quite helpful to articulate this sequencing of a rebuild of station three. It, it, it's not true that you can operate out of trailers or out of temporary space. This would be a very uniquely defined sequence of events. We cannot afford to not have station three a hundred percent operational. So can you articulate, uh, the sequence of commerce building, uh, station three, uh, build of a new building and then the sequence? I, uh, found it interesting actually to learn this myself because I naively thought, oh, we'll do the build of a new building at the same time we're tearing down. Uh, anyway, if you could handle that, I'd appreciate it. Yeah. I think I can answer that. Uh, the, the plan. Well, initially, initially when we were doing the feasibility study, uh, the feedback we got from BKV or our architect was that at that time, which was four years ago, it would be at least $2 million to go to an alternate site if we were to build it our same location.

So that essentially took that off the table. There was really no locations for that, which led to us, the city purchasing the foundation building next to us. And as part of that was we would remain in our current fire station until the new one was built, which, which depending on the design, the actual architectural design, how far it would, um, encroach on our current property. Uh, but, but we would stay in our building essentially our current, current fire station until the new one was built. And then we would just transition over. So, uh, typically if, if code or, uh, emergency operations functionality or some other things from the property are needed to be relocated, possibly that could be slotted in after, uh, an operational transfer to a new building and then.

Uh, take down of the old building. Uh, and then there would be an open parcel of some sort, or perhaps, uh, a means of getting some functionality from the property yard or from, uh, fire marshal or code into, uh, some additional space. I think that's a potential. I would lean on chief O'Neill and, uh, and our, our architect, but I, I believe there is ability in the new building to have some office space. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Others? Mr. Cunningham. Is there anything additionally, if you're building the new building on the George Mason Foundation site, how much of the existing site is going to be included in the new fire station? I don't know exactly how much, uh, because I think there's some special exceptions and, and exemptions and things that would have to go through that problem.

But I, I believe there would be some, but it would be minimal. But to tell you exactly right now, I wouldn't be comfortable doing that. In other words, it would be minimal and it would be adjacent to the new structure. Yes. So that as alluded to a good bit of that site could remain open. Correct. And with working with, with the fire department continue to control that site or could it be used then for additional construction next to it, either to expand in the future fire station three, uh, if you needed more capacity or use to repurpose for other things within the city, such as a property yard function or something else. I think that is something that, that they're looking at and working on right now as part of that, uh, public private private partnership.

So, so I think it is possible, but I think that's something that they're looking into and trying to get ideas and feedback on. Okay. And that, that is left open outside the funding of, of the project as it's moving forward and the phasing of it to get to completion. And, and there would be no other alternate operating site. I gather while this goes on, as I've heard it discussed. Correct. Yes, sir. We would remain in place. You would be remaining in place until you move next door, in which case you've got excess space. Correct. Yes, sir. Along that line. Okay. I think. The commerce site looks like it's about 30% larger, the parcel. Right. 30% bigger. That. And I guess my question and understanding all of this is, is going to the commerce site.

And if we get everything we need plus distance plus elevation for additional functionality and your opening space, is that, is that such as the school system being reserved for future to fire apartment requirements? Or, you know, as the green acre site is reserved for the school system, if we needed another school site, it's there for their use. Would this remain for the fire department's use? Or is this something that could be considered for repurposing to other uses when this process is complete? I think that's feasible. And I think that's something that the fire chief and procurement and have recently met on as part of that public private partnership to get ideas how it could be repurposed.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I'd personally love to see that feasibility study. I don't speak for anyone else. The housing of the fire marshals, whether or not that happens, it sounds like a little bit of like an unknown at this point still. Is that, is the cost and current scope you have, does that accommodate either avenue? And then moreover, are there any additional like unforeseen items that might not be factored into that budget? Uh, no to the unforeseen. I mean, I guess if it's unforeseen, we don't really know, but, but, but, but no, not that we're aware of currently, but I believe the budget was built in built within moving over with the additional square footage. So I believe the budget covers it.

Great. Um, the dollar value, uh, that I saw most recently in the CIP was 53 or $55 million for this over longer period of time. Mr. Nabte is that at least in the ballpark? Yes. 57. Does that contain the same sort of cost escalations that are used in the parks projects or Willard Sherwood? Uh, from what I was told, yes. Okay. Um, I don't know. I haven't seen it myself, but I was told yes. Okay. Um, I can't imagine anything that would be worse for the city than. Not having. A fully functional station three. Uh, it serves just my naive view watching, uh, watching the engines coming down George Mason Boulevard within earshot. Um, it serves essentially every college George Mason I've seen other than active fires where there's multiple crews in there.

It's, it's all station three, um, for the region, not just for the city, but for the sake of. The parts of the county that, uh, Ms. Lockhart referred to it. It, it really is essential that we do this right. And, uh, certainly something I think we should strongly support. And that if we have additional questions or concerns, or it may be hypothetical scenarios, we get, you know, Chief O'Neill and grill him when he gets back from Colorado and, uh, see what he has to say. Yeah. I, I think just, just to add is, is when I share the feasibility study with you guys, you'll be able to see, uh, the failing, the failing infrastructure, the, the mechanical systems that are over 40 years old. Now the plumbing, the mechanical, it's all in poor condition.

And it's only getting worse or only have gotten worse since 2022. So I'm excited to share that with you. So you can see that. Okay. Okay. Not to, uh, repeat anything or go back at all, because this is a good kind of place to sum things up. Um, the physical station at some point was owned by a volunteer fire department, which is sort of administratively separate from the professional fire department. Can you articulate how the, when the transfer happened and, um, how the ownership structure of a future building might look like and whether it would involve, uh, the participation of the volunteers? Yeah, sure. The, uh, so the original building was built in 1965 and it was renovated, started in 95 completed in 96.

Uh, the volunteers owned it at that time that they planned and executed and paid for the renovation and 20 around 2016 is when, uh, the, the city took responsibility for maintaining, even though the volunteers still own the building. And then just recently in the last year or so, um, the volunteer fire department signed the building officially over to the city in anticipation of, uh, uh, them receiving the asset, moving into the new building eventually. And, um, Okay. Yeah. Mr. Coyne. When station 33 was redeveloped, one of the discussion points we had was the increased functionality of, we're going to be able to bring trucks in the front, pull around the building and drive the drive through.

My understanding is that that didn't turn out exactly the way it was planned. And so we now back in most of the time. Are there aspects of that that could apply to this particular project? Yeah. So, so yes, uh, 50, 50 on the new fire station, we're on fire station 33. Our ambulances can drive around and, and have the drive through bay. Our rescue engine cannot, or larger fire apparatus cannot. Uh, that is something that we spent a lot of that. I spent a lot of time on making sure in the conceptual design, we would not have those issues for a number of different reasons, but the number one factor just being safety. Um, so we made sure it, all the apparatus would be able to turn and drive through.

So including the large ladder truck. Yes, sir. Correct. Okay. Thank you. And is there room for expansion if we go for larger apparatus too, as we grow in the city? There is. Yes, sir. There, there is. We, we, we did plan for, we plan for 40 years out. Okay. Cause we are seeing proposals for larger buildings in the city, whether it be approved or not. Another question. Um, I did have a question about fire station 33. And fire station three will plan to use the existing facility till the new one is completed. How was 33 handled? Cause it was done on the same site. So you didn't have that same option. Yeah. Yes. Good question. Uh, we were able to use our training center, which is located at the end of colonial Avenue,

which was, it worked coverage area based on surrounding Fairfax County companies and being able to get, uh, to the various areas of the city that 33 covered, um, and inadequate, adequate, uh, response time. And that would not be the case for station three. If we relocated out of there, there, there would, there would be some serious response challenges and gaps in coverage. Okay. Okay. And one of the discussion items or questions that came up in our prior meeting, um, was how, I forget exactly how it was put in Mr. Napty. Maybe you can refresh my memories, the discussion, but, um, um, how, how are we seeing response times change over time as redevelopment occurs in the city with existing facilities and what benefits can we articulate for the improvements?

I understand it's an old facility, but you know, you can replace air conditioning units or whatever, but we're talking more about the public safety aspects of this as well. Yeah. So, so general response times out of this responding in the city, uh, remain somewhat steady across time. What we really look at is what we call turnout time is getting out of the firehouse. You know, once the call is initiated, the tones alert us in the fire station and being able to get out. And as we build fire stations and as we did the conceptual design for station three, that was one of the number one priorities for us was making sure the majority of the living spaces were closest to the base where the apparatus is.

So you can respond and turn out very quickly. Um, so the majority of the living area day to day living area is on the first floor and on, and then the second floor would be the bunk rooms and the showers and the locker rooms and things like that with fire poles. So you can quickly access the bays and the current fire station. And I don't know if you guys had an opportunity to visit and the current fire station there in the back of the building on the second floor. So you have to, if you're, if you're in the bunk room, if you're sleeping, get up, either go through a door pole, go through the kitchen out into the bay or go down the stairs and through a couple of doors. So it's just, it's not a, I would say it's not up to the today's standards and expectations of being able to turn out rapidly.

Um, but that, that is something in the conceptual design that we paid a lot of attention to. And with additional growth in the city, I imagine there's potential for growth in the staff and the need for facilities to accommodate more people than today's facilities would allow. Yeah, that is something, something we're continuing to evaluate, especially as it, as it relates to our, our, our EMS units. Uh, because the number of people, uh, whether it's residents, whether it's business owners, whether it's Mason growing, uh, that we're paying attention to and the call volume that's increasing and, and really looking at the peak time. So that's Monday, Monday through Friday, nine to five ish, eight to eight to five ish.

Um, and, and seeing if we need to increase capacity there. Uh, but, uh, as we were evaluating it for this budget cycle, we decided not to do that or propose that for this year, but it's something we're going to continue to look at potentially put on the table for next budget cycle. Okay. Thank you. I'll start over here. Okay. I just want to, uh, uh, just commend you and chief O'Neill. Uh, you have a CFAI international accreditation. You have ISO, uh, class one ratings. And, um, we talk a lot about the city's bond ratings or at least maintaining that. And I think, uh, it, it's important to emphasize that part of the context behind investing in emergency services is our insurance costs for maintaining emergency services.

And that's based partly on the impressive accreditation results, uh, year and a half ago and, um, the excellent ratings that you have. So, um, we don't want to lose that. And, uh, we've been discussing a few, you know, what if sort of negative things, uh, but the picture is very, very bright. Um, do you have any comment on the, what if, you know, in terms of accreditation, the next one, which my understanding is, is 20, 29, 20, 30. Um, if we don't replace station three, would it be a problem for the folks that come in and independently accreditate the department? I think there's potential for that and, and, and not necessarily because of the building, but more so, uh, the health and safety factors that aren't built into fire station three.

Um, and while some have been accommodated to the best we can, uh, they're certainly not up to, to the standard now. And they certainly are far below where fire station 33 is health, safety and wellness. Um, building mechanisms that we put into place. Um, and so, so I think that's where the accreditation piece would, we may have challenges in the future with the, with the fire station. Uh, why I know they were discussed, uh, as part of our last cycle last year, when our team was in town evaluating us, it was discussed. But with the recognition that we were working on a new building, we had the conceptional design. So they left it out of the report. Um, so I know the structure risk part of that accreditation report, um, looked at hypotheticals about, uh, increased building height.

And, um, I know another thing in the city that we have, which is a serious issue is the non ambulatory facilities where if there's a fire in a nursing home or in, uh, a jail, um, it's a real extreme challenge getting people out safely quickly. Um, so investment in making sure we have a station that can respond really quickly to nursing homes, the county's jail facility, which we're closest to all of those things kind of play into this. So I, I would really not want to see us, uh, end up losing the kind of ratings that we have and the quality of the department we have, uh, by, by not investing properly. And it has been, it's been 35 years since, uh, it was renovated of 30 years at least. And we should, uh, we should support this as well.

Thank you. Mr. Gunnigan. Thank you. Jimдедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедедеде and going out of the fire station is that something that has been looked at and considered for either improving times by not having to go through downtown if you could get around to go west or are there impacts that are being looked at with regard to the future construction of

of transportation arteries that go through this area i i would say we're constantly evaluating all aspects of our response times and ways we can improve them as far as the fire station and south street and i i know our traffic engineer and bkv has looked at that we spent a lot of time looking at looking at all the various options and kind of landed where where we landed at now based on feedback from them as far as response times in the future and trying to find better ways we're always trying to do that and and one of the things we've we've been able to do is preemption which i don't know if you're familiar with that but essentially it's gps and changes the lights which is huge for us okay and so this is being coordinated with the county then for the future on who and how we're

going to get through so we can get equipment and other things that will will work in going there when we talk about serving woodley chase and some of these other options that are outside the vicinity but in the city's road structure is not particularly conducive to getting around efficiently especially to areas like that are there any changes from a response standpoint that we should be looking at for future changes to the transportation network in the city uh you know university drive used to go through and provide one and then george mason boulevard has changed somewhat the pattern to get to the university how you get through to roberts road or other places are there things like that that that from a response standpoint would make a significant difference as we look at this station

being able to serve the area around that it's required to yeah i think we've implemented the majority of the things uh as of right now preemption things like that i i will say we work closely with the transportation um and the project managers as they're doing road designs they're doing trail designs we have we have department members that set on the various committees that provide feedback and guidance as it relates to emergency response so i think as these designs come up we're able to provide that feedback in real time i'm not aware of any specific unless unless we're going to put four lane highways everywhere but but i don't know i can't think of anything off the top of my head that okay connecting

some roads through to get to make it accessible uh would be what the thought in there uh for some of the roads in in that area that that might be given reasonable thought that that is a good question i'd have to put some additional thought into that we're happy to do that and give you some input it's a good question okay thank you that's kind of looking ahead we should be thinking about from planning commission bringing forward ideas that may not have been captured yet so it's good to prompt uh thought exercise that's actually a neat dovetail to my question which is going to be for mr napty what's the forum to have these sort of cross-functional conversations about facility public facility development i mean absent

kind of raising the flag in certain meetings what's the right way to get people together talking about this stuff uh i don't think there is a formal forum uh the the effort that chair feather was talking about earlier is a level of service study that air foreman is leading right now and hopefully we'll have a work session with you all on that in february or march but that is looking at impacts from development on all city services and how we can go about offsetting that uh hopefully once that effort is established then there'll be ongoing discussions on it uh but to this date we haven't had a a central forum where all departments all types of facilities are discussing things together as it's

always been project-based if there's a transportation project they bring in everybody that needs to be coordinated with for that if we have a planning project we bring everybody that needs to be coordinated for that there isn't there isn't anything that's just ongoing city city oversight okay i guess i'm just kind of hung up on problem solving for the property yard because that's multiple functions types of vehicles types of activity and we have city investment projects that could take some or all of that but we're not providing a forum for those discussions to happen so well in that case and i can't provide all the details of of of how that study has progressed i know it's not complete yet but with any of these there

is in addition after a feasibility study is done the next step is usually figuring out where should we do what we need to do and that was the case with fire station 3d has looked at alternative sites and ultimately landed on where they landed and that was a part of the property yard study as well and my understanding is that they identified sites throughout the city where they could move some of the the different um the different types of functions that are there uh recognizing it might not all be in one place now i don't know exactly what their criteria was and i'm assuming that this site did not turn up in that my guess is they were looking at larger sites um but there there may have been some discussions that they could have said well if you know fire station 3 is moving next door there'll

be a little bit of empty land there um we could have some facilities there and i know that's that's not going to be one of the recommendations that i'm aware of and my guess is because of the size of the site um but that was a there was a venue for that conversation to happen it just focused in on different criteria i mean that kind of goes back to the question then too of who has right of first refusal right if we're looking at two other unused or underutilized sites in the city how do you get people in a room to start hashing that out i think honestly that is a issue that happens rarely enough that no process has been developed but uh so for example the barker house has a recent donation to the city um and that it kind of

clarifies in the deed that it has to be used for parks for uses and things like that but what exactly we do with that there's been no conversation um and i think partly that's because this is something that we did was so rarely that we didn't really know how to start it another one is one of the projects the cip is the west drive property i was going to say west drive and then green acres yeah um and so yeah to my knowledge there's no set process for that and it's good to know these opportunities are happening but again they happened the last time it happened before this is probably so long ago that whoever was involved is no longer here and so any other mr mccarthy any yeah i think that's a great point and i don't i just don't know if that's

good enough like is is is there a means for us to make some kind of recommendation to yeah okay i mean yes i think and you know we had it from your conversation on december 8th there this was alluded to in one of those and when we start to develop those we can we can build upon that but certainly this is a venue where you can make those kind of recommendations i think it's very good very good conversation that we'll include in our remarks to council anything else for buyer thank you so much very informed very helpful it started it stimulated some really good discussion here too i think we've taken it a step up from some of our previous ones too but thank you all right well thank you yeah yes come back back you guys come back again

uh so before we get into uh actually drafting recommendations i want to see if there's any questions for me on any topics that were not covered tonight we can go through those and then we can start to come up with what our priorities are going to be i was looking at last year's recommendations and i felt like we pretty much are wanting to say the same thing so you know in your observer opinion where did we miss the mark in how we expressed it if we're now coming back and saying the same thing a year later well some of the issues as we noted were i think when we when the recommendations are kind of the bigger picture uh cip wide as opposed to focusing on a specific project it's it's it even if council is reacting and listening and doing something about it i feel like they're the kind

of things that won't necessarily show up in a single year um and so some of those things are still priorities um the van dyke master plan was the only project specific one and the recommendation at the time was that planning commission is okay deferring this and it was deferred so now it's it's back and what do you want to say again so uh i don't think that there's anything wrong happening with it uh i would also say that um you know we we we stay pretty high level with these the when the planning commission actually presents the recommendations to city council that's the opportunity to kind of dig in and explain and provide background in a much better way than you can do in a resolution um and i think that we should just make sure we're thinking about that as make sure we take advantage of

the opportunity the best that we can to really enforce it and make sure they understand it yeah and i think that's probably right because um the discussions we've had here this evening you know we made kind of some conclusions and can make very strong statements and supporters and things we know um in the background there's pushback against some of these projects for some good reasons related to fund funding and financing and tax rate and all that um you know we need to be careful not to uh be too influenced by that perhaps uh but stick to our guns and and elevate things we think are most important we can build on why we think that's the case uh maybe even stronger make stronger statements um as well and i hope you all will be there at the work session by the way to chip in but mr cunningham

thank you thank you i guess in response to miss lockhart's comment my comment would be did we miss the mark when we look at the re-characterization of the council and the staff last year this was the first time they had ever received a recommendation or a package from the planning commission because all of them were new they weren't here to have gone through this process before so i don't know that we missed the mark did we not understand our target audience and where they were intending to go might be another observation but our i don't know that our recommendations last year were were far out of bounds and my thought for this year having watched the response last year would probably be to strongly reiterate that proceeding

with things like the uh the senior center and the joint county community center should be proceeding and reiterate that kind of statement in light of the conversations that i've heard during the past year uh they still are capable of dealing with it as they will but i think that kind of reinforcement says that what we're doing is longer term rather than this was this year's recommendation next year we'll have a couple of hundred million dollars for you to go in a different direction and and we tap dance through this because most of this is not of the moment type of boy that was a great idea we're really ought to do that most of this is long-term planning and implementation that takes time to

develop and execute and then look at the efficacy of it as you're moving down the road what have we done to improve the facilities in the city and you go from projects that have been completed completed to projects that are to be completed and what is there you know what is the impact going to be so i i'm not concerned that our recommendations are are bad or should be redone for the audience that we're looking for uh i'm looking at the recommendations we make to be solid in any environment whether they can be implemented or how much of them can be implemented may be at issue because of finances or other things along that line of pro-election but i think the recommendations we make are typically solid

recommendations that implement as much as you feel capable in the terms of prison presenting them to the city council not boy you know we should have gone a different direction to give you something that you wanted and that may be a challenge here but i think from the discussion i've heard from mr mccarthy from mrs lockhart and the rest that what we're looking at is talking about things that are germane to the city that are longer term that are our function their function is to you know implement a budget this year with what they have to work with uh do it next year and then try to keep their jobs and get reelected to do it again but that's that shouldn't be our focus on only giving them projects that that are short term

our focus should be on giving them projects that make the city a better place and let them work through the decision on selecting those projects that they feel will be the most bang for the buck at the given time and as we're looking right in front of us here consistent with comprehensive plan i don't think i've heard anything today that suggests at least the key items we're talking about or not uh yes there's a question of prioritization funding um but you know there are realities about tax rates and so forth but also uh deterioration of the facilities and services to the city and as i think it was what mr rice brought up at the previous meeting that mr napty captured in the initial comments about what

make people want to live here and keep them here um and you'll be a part of this broader vital area that we live in um there's a reason we don't want to get behind we don't have to necessarily um do everything at once but we have to be very mindful that at some point uh the fact that we've deferred a lot in the past is going to catch up to us and we can't let it get too far away from us even if there may be short-term pain those decisions are for the council not us well i feel like our our comments our feedback should inspire confidence in these projects not open them up to criticism and and that's where i feel like maybe we we fell down a little bit from last year to now because some of these are still up for debate where we don't feel like they should be so

that's the more i'm talking about do we need to strengthen our language you know what didn't hit the mark to to engender that confidence to move forward that we're still having the same conversation a year later i'd have to go back and think are there items that we discussed last year that have been stopped or are they just been deferred like van dyke that was moved fire station three's been on the table for a long time still conversations we had a great discussion tonight that could strengthen a recommendation for sure gst tomorrow night that's your opportunity others i think that in city council's realm they're dealing with the ongoing political environment and if you're a person with children in the school system your focus is what's happening in the next

two years or three years in school and how will my children change if you look at the ongoing greater political uh activity in the metro area a great many people are saying hey i've lost my job what's going on with the government the stability of the playing field is changing rapidly how do i keep traction so that i can stay involved in and succeed in this process and some of what we're talking about here as a planning commission is is looking at putting in the facilities for the capital improvement program that are going to transcend these these type of things the ball fields that tie us part aren't dependent on what's happening in the school system in the next two years the building of a community center is not dependent on the fact we're going to have a community or not it says we're

going to upgrade the core facility for a large number of people in the city that they can use going forward if it turns out to be unaffordable and is deferred for a year that i don't think is our primary focus i think our focus is saying that is a needed facility so from that standpoint uh i don't know how much of the the current climate we should be incorporating into this kind of recommendation i think we should be getting back the discussion we just had where we said we've got three or four properties in this city and we don't even have a process to deal with them when they give us tremendous opportunity that's something we should be looking at to to find and make better that's something that we as a planning commission have the latitude to do without having to have 97 emails by

tomorrow from constituents to tell us why we're doing this or why we're not doing this or how to do it better or anything else we're not in the current the current thrashing environment to try to sort this out on an immediate basis we've got the time and the intellect and the ability to look at it in a longer term process to make the best use of it and or at least recommend the best use of it and whether that's adopted or not maybe beyond our charter but it doesn't mean we shouldn't have a very strong input into it thoughts what we want to say mr race i think miss lockhart and mr cunningham captured some important aspects of this i'm still stuck in the present so my view unfortunately is you know what happens if we

do you turn on some of these projects and i'm i'm adding up the millions of dollars of investment that we lose i'm you know obviously george schneider trail is one you know millions of dollars uh um the cost of not moving the property yard it's actively flooding um the cost in terms of insurance if we don't upgrade station three uh the lost confidence in our schools if we have a high school that has a leaking roof you know people will choose to live in the county our property values may start to decline relative to our neighbors and our you know 49 of our operating revenue from property taxes will start to dip so sometimes it's hard to ignore the present political realities which you know are largely financial right now um it's hard to pull out of that mode and to think in

the general terms of the long-term view so uh it's a challenge i agree with you that it's a challenge but again how much of it is our challenge and how much of it is the council's challenge and what's the difference between the two bodies and their purpose so what would you like to say to the council well they do have to make decisions based on budgets they accepted a tax rate that was eight cents below what the city manager recommended we've shot ourselves in the foot um and we have problems right now funding long-term priorities that have been established by previous city councils because of those financial issues it's real hard to separate it's not our job so i think your comments are well heated and i should think about that more

uh extracting myself from that kind of worry about those things and then thinking long term because really it will conditions will change uh circumstances will be different in two years and five years and if we're constantly changing our trajectory uh you know we're going to be using up all our energy with that rather than you know setting a course that is going to be steady and will be beneficial five years from now so um anyway i don't think any of this is very helpful to us for me to spin my wheels and worry about it but i think it's i'm just expressing that it's hard to think of this as a long-term thing when there are direct pressing things related to these projects happening now that involve dollars and budgets and

reputation and insurance insurability things like this so um maybe i just need to write myself a note that's not your job you know don't worry about that well i think it's also the difference between saying we agree these are all priorities we can't fund all these priorities how do we slip the schedule to make it work and the the talking points which are more along the lines of this is actually not a priority and i disagree with 10 years of work that's got us to that point that's kind of what i meant about inspiring confidence maybe that's too gentle a word but reminding people that there has been work and thought beyond the current reactionary sort of voices in the in the today against these projects

and the playing field changes uh as i alluded to earlier with miss summerfield there was a time when getting a master plan was like pulling teeth and worse than going to the dentist and today if we need a master plan it is a small amount of funding and so we put it at it whether we're going to use it or not because it gives us a a talking point or an anchor on which we could move forward but are we spending so much on these small master plans that are not going to go any place that we have lost focus of what is the core that we're trying to accomplish and you know before we had none now we have one for everything and then we revise them and all of that goes into the cost consideration as times shift

and what we focus on when we focus on schools a quarter century ago we focused on what do we need to change how many elementary schools do we need to keep a full county program going from four to two what do we need to do to renovate our schools going forward when as a company when as a planning commission we began to ask the question it's now five years ago and more to the planning to the school board what do we you know it's 25 years do we need to be doing anything i mean the county doesn't all automatically renovate every one of its schools every 20 to 25 years they've got too many it's too expensive they have a different way of approaching that and our approach is that we're property managers we should look at it

maybe we don't need to do it if we do perhaps we should look at exactly what we need to do and cost it as opposed to coming up with a bulk of our cost and selling it and then trying to go out and figure what we can do for that cost uh so the way we go about things has changed in certain ways that may or may not be productive in moving us forward it's current it's the way we do business today but are there other things that might be a little more efficient that might be a little more effective in helping us take those next steps realizing that my second third and fourth graders on the soccer team how can i get that scholarship to pay for the education in college instead of saying hey i've got eight

more years to let the child grow and develop into a person and then when they get to that point we'll be able to deal with the options and the realities uh when we're only dealing with down the road in major changes that might or might not come about you bring in additional uncertainty and so some of that uncertainty is something we see coming but how we approach that uncertainty in that period of getting to actually doing it makes a difference and the function of our staff uh mrs summerfield is sitting in the former police chief's office and when the police chief moves out of that office the director of community development and planning moved into that office and then we did some construction in the city

and built an annex on city hall and did some other facilities and now it's the park and recs office where mr summerfield is the office has been repurposed three times for very different functions and that's probably what we're looking at moving forward how are we repurposing and keeping things functional how are we building new things to make things better that's what the comprehensive improvement plan the capital improvement plan is designed to do us to recommend projects that if the city implements them makes things better in the future it didn't throw out anything that we were doing it didn't destroy anything unless we need to tear down a building to replace it so as i look at this we have we have a

challenge but it's a challenge that's looking at how do we move forward and there's going to be a lot of debate on that especially at the city council because there they get to have 25 000 different opinions that they can weigh in on and i don't know that we have to deal with all of that input to say this is the right thing to do in a recommendation that we're going to send to them so i think you've got a solid base are there changes that we want to make let's hit on those are there things that you think we shouldn't be recommending that don't fit the current climate mr nappy let me just make one maybe a couple comments um you talked about making things better yes we're also talking about preserving

capability that's deteriorating as well and frankly a lot of things with big dollar things right now are in that category right the fire station the property yard um arguably the willard sherwood center we look at the deterioration in the green acres site and and and then making things better yes we have community expectations we live in a different world now than when the city was founded and and the expectations are higher for what services and facilities should be made available certainly education facilities need to step up it's not just preserving what we have those aren't good enough in today's education environment there really are uh some of both right but um a lot of it still we're talking about some of the big bucks

projects are preserving uh where our investments are today making some things better sure absolutely but uh these projects are also intertwined you're not going to do one without doing the other right you're not going to rebuild green acres to get just green acres right so you you've got a new library you've got a new police station you've got a new annex on city hall those were major steps that were made made that are functional at the moment they won't be at some time in the future but they're functional at the moment which allows us to go with a community center a fire station a property yard and focus on those kinds of things and then we focus on schools to keep them current and up to date and functional

into the future because they're major periodic investments but none of that deals with replacement of sewers or redoing brick sidewalks downtown or all of the other maintenance things that come into the rest of the infrastructure and it says as well we don't have to comment on those any longer but it's still competition for scarce resources i think one of our successes actually is sewers it's wastewater sewer and the maintenance schedule that they're on that's one of the most impressive things that i've seen about the city is the degree to which uh public works and the stormwater utilities able to diagnose problems before they become five times as expensive to fix and uh and we see that constantly we get updates you know via text message every morning about roads that

will be you know partially blocked based on some infrastructure that's being repaired that's being repaired at a fraction the cost it would be if it were to crumble and need emergency uh help i remember looking at mr summers and recommending strongly that we do something to invest money in a surveillance capability a gis-based uh program that would allow us to be able to look at things like this and it's been wildly successful so maybe some things that we do recommend are listen to and implemented and it may not always happen at city council level it may be happening by really really good staff that hear good ideas and frankly we do spend a lot of time on master plans we spend a huge amount of effort in those small area plans and we have an implementation group that meets to

figure out how to implement those and maybe that's the kind of effort we need more of people that are meeting on a regular basis to uh look at that plan and say how do we put this into action and so um anyway uh i think that's uh all my thoughts for now and i should uh uh commend you for making me think about a lot i'm you know we're lucky that we have you here on the commission you um have seen so many different changes in the city over time that um that most of us were not even resident here for that that's quite valuable so we need to make sure that we always have that i would second that comment because i remember the intersection of 50 and 123 being closed because of flooding hasn't happened recently so there are things like that that are major steps forward and

are to be commended so we just need to keep it up all right let's try to bring it back to what we want to do between now and the next meeting to put together some recommendations comments from each of you yeah about where you'd like to see this go happy to work offline with mr napty and miss lockhart to frame uh something about i've had notes of my own i think mr napty said think of three high priority things from the cip and think of three things that should be lower priorities and then um and then think of anything that we're missing that's a little question i've had that kind of in my mind and certainly um i really do think the property are the willow shearwood center and station three are

are both necessary based on their connections to everything else happening but also the potential problem of what if we ignore this or put this off i don't think any of those three we can afford to push off into the future based on plans that are already underway and money spent so those those look to be three things for me at least that are high priority yeah i think building on your final comment there gets to what miss lockhart was talking about too making a compelling case to support these uh perhaps better than we have in the past not that they're not going to get built but it's not clear that we presented the urgency that we see some of the information we've heard recently of course other comments

i support that you're happy for us to take it offline at this point mr napty what have you heard uh just okay yeah sorry i'll just summarize we'll quickly anybody want to go back over some of the things we've just to refresh us where we started some of the things that came up in our prior meeting okay so i'm just jotting down notes on on what i'm hearing uh but yeah we'll go back really quick if you want to i'll focus on the the general capital comments and the project comments but related to what we heard before support external funding and seek new opportunities for external funding leverage to deal on properties to offset costs for other projects we'll talk about some more of that tonight with fire station three uh that quote invest in what makes people want to live here

and consider longer term changes when prioritizing short term or partial improvements uh what's not in here i think uh what uh commissioner lockhart was talking about comments that we had last year about protecting previous investments by supporting projects that continue to implement previous planning efforts we had two that kind of touched on that um sounds like that might be something we want to bring back or rephrase for this year i was just going to say and also adding one more bullet here about that these are a lot of these are revenue generating projects so to look at them in the context of long-term payoff uh i don't know if a lot of them are some of them are parks ones maybe all right in an indirect way almost everything we do to improve the city's you know feeding into

property values that feeds into our budget and they're that's maybe that's a direct connection um but certainly with parks there is revenue to generate um i made fruitless arguments to a previous city council 12 13 years ago about putting in a swimming facility and blank looks just like what in the world the insurance cost for a facility the operating cost just in this you know strategy and no it has maybe a 10-year payoff there's a huge amount of revenue generated from renting lane space and there's almost an unlimited demand um so there are ways that these generate um generate revenue when it's real and with a commission of parks um kind of a body that now exists that will be able to work with parks uh foundation that will be able to

generate gifts through bequests or donations uh we didn't have that ability before and so um there definitely things to think about in terms of being able to generate revenue from things like the willard sherwood center that we do build and the other half the revenue generating equation is cost avoidance as well as we talk about um you know potential downsides long term for property yard deterioration and continued deferral that uh potential fire station issues you've talked about accreditation insurance and so forth um that's the other half of the equation the next slide was previous year right is that correct Let me go back to the other list, if you please. Yes. The next slide was previous here, right?

Is that correct? No, the next slide is project specific. Okay, yeah, yeah. So I guess one thing I would ask is if the commission supports all of these comments, because these are the more general ones. When we get to the more project specific ones, I think we need to talk through them a little bit more. I think we have some different opinions and there's kind of a lot to cover. I think to the point Ms. Lockhart made, is there some world where we should make a general recommendation, like when considering the magnitude of some of these large scale projects, the property yard, the Sherwood Center, the fire station, to not look at those projects in a vacuum and try to be dynamic and consider future needs and cross-functionality,

like trying to look around the bend as to not be moving three different people through the same office because we didn't really think about what it was going to look like in a couple years. Yep. Did that capture? I mean, we can work on the words offline. Offline. Yeah, I completely agree. I think it was a good thought. And my mind, you know, went toward other projects that have three or four interested parties. And certainly the acquisition of the property on the West, you know, it's been discussed by schools. It's been discussed by Parks and Rec. It's been discussed by the fire department. It's lots of eyes on that as a potential acquisition and something that we could do in the city, but we don't have a mechanism for facilitating that discussion other than things that happen in back rooms

by, you know, a handful of people. It would be helpful if there was a way to sort of talk about the mutual uses or interests in these. And maybe I'd leave it up to Ms. Lockhart to figure out the wording for that good thought that's kind of still running circles around my brain. I mean, for installation planning, you'd call it the CONOPS, the concept of operations. What is going to happen in that place or in that building or at this time? And then once you know that, then everybody who's a stakeholder in that can come and participate, right? So, you know, where, to Mr. Cunningham's point about master planning, that's great, but it shouldn't be happening in a vacuum. So I'd have to think more about, you know, what the staff impacts of that are,

what that looks like, who champions that. But, and this isn't a knock on, you know, the current staff. It's hard to not to know what you don't know. But, you know, to your point that it's historically been rare, it's about to become not rare. So. You know, I think a good example tonight was just the realization that South Street Extension, will have a major impact on Station 3 and their ability to potentially get in and out. Why didn't I, why hasn't that been a central thought of mine before? I recognize my own deficits as I start to age. And my kids frequently remind me that I am eligible to join the Senior Center. That's typically the argument ender. I don't like to hear that. But I don't think about these things.

And obviously we've talked about South Street Extension multiple times. It involves the county. It involves the city. It involves, you know, police and fire. There's six different groups. I haven't ever thought about its impact as that road continues through adjacent. It's a road fire already uses to get into their lot, crossing another parcel. So it is directly an impact. But, yeah. Maybe it's, you know, better governance. Maybe it's empowering staff to do more kind of reaching out to other departments. Maybe more, you know, implementation groups. Like I understand Ms. Denny leads for the small area plans. And we need more of that. And it would be quite helpful, I think, if we had a practice of doing that.

Okay. Okay. So these are three that we've added. And as Chair Feather said, we can reword these and get back to you in combination with the four general capital comments that we had previously. Are we okay with keeping all four of these? And do we want to add anything else? And then I'll also go to the next slide in a minute and we'll talk about the specific project mentioned. This was a comment Chair Feather made with the fuel station as the example, questioning, making sure that we are thinking about future larger scale projects as we're the shorter term. Yeah, that's right. I might just say then, consider longer term plans in front of us and short term improvements. Yeah, we can use that as an example.

But that's a pretty big investment in a property yard that's going to go away. Yeah, changes was thrown at me. Remove or something. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And even in that context from very broad terms, some of the potential integrations and interactions that we haven't really addressed before as well could fall into that. Some of maybe specific investments, but some are the big picture of how we're going to keep all the balls in the air, take advantage of the space, get some of the real estate that we need to accomplish some of these things anyway, keep things moving. Yep. Okay. So we have the four from the previous side, the three that we've added. And now if we could step through these and see if we want to carry any of these forward, if there's any that are conflicting, see if we want to do anything with them.

It's the first timing for the Van Dyke master plan invitation. We had some mixed comments on that. I think some of it, Commissioner Rice, you've mentioned today about how it's coordinating with the Village Sherwood and the Blenna Boulevard improvements. Do we want to say anything about that specifically? Well, I mean, that's the message, right? Let's do them right, do them together. I don't think we lengthen the bullet, but I think directly citing connection to two other major projects that are already underway. I mean, everything's connected there. Yeah, we shouldn't treat these in isolation. We're in a vacuum. Okay. That's an example of that message. Timing for the property yard redevelopment.

I think this was more questions last time. Is there anything you want to say about that? We have one now where we're talking about the consequence of deferring. I think that's what some of this was getting at. Yeah. There's potentially massive consequences. We just line up the 2016 FEMA, you know, boundaries with the 2023, and we can see how they end at 2006, I should say, in 2023. It's there have been significant changes even over a short period of time in terms of the flooding of that area. And it's not a timing. I think if we did choose a more urgent word or message, there would need to be something for this particular bullet more than any other that would express a little more urgency. That the consequences of not moving forward with a plan for the property yard are potentially disastrous.

Yeah, but again, risk assessment is not just about consequence, it's about likelihood, and then comparing to other risks that we have. And we're not in a position to make that judgment, but we can certainly emphasize the perception of the important consequences, the decision on the overall risk, probability and consequence, is outside our purview. But directionally, we need to keep moving on this, right? And based on your expertise, for example. Yep. The next one, alternative funding for school facility improvements, I don't think this is directly addressed anywhere else. We should have a comment about external funding. I don't know if that is adequate for this one if we want to separately address it.

I mean, there's a lot of confidence that the legislature will lack this year to support the additional revenue generation that we're talking about. If we're talking about something else in terms of sponsorships at schools, I don't know that that's not on other people's radar already. I'm not sure it should be a priority for us. I think maybe if you could go back to the – let's – I think this was – what we were saying was we support legislative action, right, for alternative tax structures for schools. But that's kind of outside the purview. It's more just a data point when you're considering when to slot in the school improvements. Maybe a few in the weeds for this conversation. Yep. Okay. And we can revise this as an external and alternative.

And if we want to provide examples while the commission is presenting city council, then we can get more direct on that. I think we're pretty confident that there's already that support on the council. Yeah. Anyway, but – General support for stormwater and wastewater projects. We haven't talked about that much. I don't know if we need to. I mean, that's – You got taken out of. It's done. Right. It looks largely out of – When something's going so well, maybe we don't say anything about it and just let it keep going. But we have the stormwater utility now, and it's their job. We're an external funding source. Yeah. We do, and it's been a great success. And the sheer amount of money that we're saving the future versions of ourselves is just mind-blowing.

I talked to staff about this. It's going very, very well. It's important. The infrastructure and the cost of the infrastructure, if it were to be neglected, would be huge. And things are going well. And I think there was some effort when I first joined the commission in this of 2020 where we discussed this. And it's resulted in some changes. And obviously, the stormwater utility is going very well. We definitely want this to continue, but maybe we don't include it at the same high level and just – unless there's a threat to pulling funding from it. And I don't sense at all that there's going to be like that. I don't think there is. I'm not sure if there are any – There is an item in the SIP.

Not many, if any. Most of them are moved to the maintenance aspect, right? Correct. Mr. Gunnian? Some of this ends up in the interesting discussion that may or may not be useful. I gather the council where at one point we talked about having a water plant. And if we were to maintain that, which was a strong city priority, what would the cost of that be today? I think we took the right steps and avoided a major bullet. Now when we're talking stormwater and some of this, I think we have taken the right steps and we have avoided a bullet. Part of what we're looking at in here that we have had moved out of the CIP, we're not talking about trash trucks at the moment. But council is talking about enterprise funding, so to speak, or making a separate fund for trash collection, which would I presume then also not only pick up trash collection, but the replacement of the vehicles that go into trash collection.

And making that a separate build item along with property taxes, which would take it out of the budget. So some of these items are changing, and our discussion is talking about current events as in a changing playing field, which may or may not be beneficial as we're moving forward to keeping us solid in the recommendations we're making. I guess we're not talking about trash collection and deferring that cost to a different part of the budget for collection. And just like stormwater, we found it worked with one thing. Just like a number of years ago, we found out instead of paying cash for vehicles, if we started leasing vehicles and buying them after five years, we could buy a lot more vehicles for a number of years.

And so we did. And these are part of the evolution of budget management to get maximum bang for the buck. So we're at some of these points, I think, where the council has got outside resources and getting recommendations on different approaches to some of this that we are not necessarily providing input or usable input in because we don't know the full playing field of what they're dealing with. So while I think those are excellent projects and those are great steps forward, are we in keeping with making those steps and making the recommendation? The largest item in the wastewater budget is just paying our share of the Norman coal plant by a large fraction. It doesn't need our input. We're going to get a bill.

Okay. Okay. Let's move on. Timing and scale of fire station three replacement. We had questions about that tonight. Excellent discussion. One of the three projects mentioned here under the urgent projects. So I assume that's being covered unless we want to say anything specific about it. Well, I think emphasizing the complexity of, you know, we can't take a building down before. Anyway, there's a sequence that happens. The cost of temporarily housing fire department elsewhere is, I was told, $5 million just to do that. It's not feasible to relocate. There's a particular sequence that happens, and it needs to happen in a careful way. The station's not in good condition. It's important to do, and I think the words on the yellow slide, it's, again, it's probably less to me about timing than the sequence.

I don't know. Maybe timing's the right word. Timing's probably the right word. It's just a complicated replacement that has to happen in a very specific way. And I think delaying the start of that would cause significant issues in terms of the department's ability to function. Anyway, their accreditation process that they've just gone through happens every five years, and they will conceivably, if this is put off, their next accreditation will happen and notice sort of the deficits. So it's not something, I think, that can be put off at all. I think it needs to be addressed soon and not something we should defer. Anything else on fire station three? Support for the West Drive property yard acquisition.

This was the general statement about these opportunities not coming very often. We should take advantage of it. It's still in the process. I think they have the carpet over again. But this weighs into the integration of potential other uses and staging and sequencing and opportunity. Is that one we want to specifically mention? Because the other board projects that were on that slide, we are mentioning somewhere else. That one we are not. You had given us instructions to choose three. And so... That was my request, but that was from each of you. Three from each of you. Okay. Yeah, three from each. Yeah. I think we have an agreement, but not all the CIP funds have been allocated. When is it likely to take place?

It's all dependent on the county finishing the new facility they're building down off of Fairfax County Parkway. And my understanding has been delayed several times, and I believe it's still two or three years away. My understanding is that Chair of the Planning Commission does the same discussion we had. But I was Chair of the Planning Commission one time. Yes. Yeah. So I didn't know if we were any closer to... It's still important. It's still a... Once in a rare opportunity... Once in a rarity opportunity. It gives us a lot of latitude down the road. So it's an investment in the future. Okay. Yeah. We should list it. Support for continuing the acquisition and the use of that parcel and some sort of discussion

amongst city staff and others interested parties about the best use of it. Because I know it's been discussed by schools. It's been discussed by fire. It's been discussed by public works. There's... Parks. Parks. Parks. Yeah. Okay. Continuing investment in the Wilder-Sharewood Community Center. So we're already mentioning that, but I don't know. So looking at these comments and the new comments we've added, we don't have anything similar to the comments we had last year about continuing investments and efforts that are already underway. So I think we've heard that talked about several times tonight. Do we want to add a comment that addresses that? I certainly can't hurt to say that. I think our discussion this evening sort of elevated the Willard-Sharewood beyond just we've spent some money on it already.

We should keep going. We're looking at it as part of an integrated redevelopment upgrade moving that whole corridor against facilities for the citizens, the seniors, families. Okay. So it sounds to me like instead of having a general statement as we had last year now, we're having a more specific statement and identifying specific projects that are in that situation. And we're recommending continuing investment in these projects that we've already invested in. And we're specifically identifying property on Station 3 and Willard-Sharewood. How do you feel? I think that probably strikes the right tone because otherwise you run into inviting the argument of like, well, you're just telling us to spend money because we already spent money.

Whereas what we're trying to say is there was a reason that money was spent. These are good projects. Please finish that. Yeah, really as part of the why do I want to live in the city of Fairfax versus, you know, living in Oakton or Vienna or Falls Church. It's, you know, we don't have our own community centers in the sense that we have a place to recreate, a place for seniors, a place to hold community meetings. That's not the library. I mean, there are a lot of reasons why it will enhance quality of life in the city. That's always been part of the vision. And so I think Willard-Sharewood is about the need to continue making the city of Fairfax an attractive place to live. It's, you know, it's part of our bragging about how the city is great.

It's, anyway, there's, it's certainly more than just we've already spent a lot of money, but I don't think we can ignore the cost of a U-turn, particularly given the county's recent warnings to us. It just would be disastrous. Sorry, that's a little dark. I just, I think about these financial issues and the cost of us backing out with trusted partners. But I think in a more positive light, it certainly will significantly add to the quality of life in the city. The meeting space, the recreation opportunities, the senior center adjacent to the Sherwood Center adjacent to Van Dyke Park. There are just a lot of reasons why that location and that use is, is important. And we'll, it'll continue making the city a nice place to live.

So, anyway. And the state of the current facilities. Okay. And the last one was, uh, questions about the cost and need for turf conversion projects. Uh, there was a questions to, uh, Ms. Summerfield about that. It was about the, it didn't seem like there were any comments. It was about the, Catherine Johnson one, but. Yeah. The other ones at the high school that, you know, to me, I'm not sure sufficient risk assessments done on that, but, um, we didn't really talk about it. We didn't have anybody from the schools in to address that, but. Right. I think the ADA compliance issues with the present is unacceptable and has been for a decade. Yeah. Um, it's. That was Catherine Johnson. Catherine Johnson.

That's right. And, uh, I, uh, I think Ms. Summerfield, you know, correctly notes its positioning between Kuttner and the school and it's, um, you know, ended in the trails nearby the nature kind of, uh, underneath the tree canopy there that we want to. That's spectacular. It's such a great place to, to walk. Um, so it is kind of like the Sherwood, to will the Sherwood centers kind of in a key location within an activity corridor. That field is a key location and aligning the streets as she mentioned to get traffic sorted and that will help deal with parking issues. But, uh, it just, um, I think again, it's a complex project that involves undoing some real difficult issues about the fill underneath the present field and its poor drainage.

And that's why the cost is large. And the right facility gets the, Ms. Lockhart's comment was about how we can actually benefit from it. And it becomes a compliance issue now that the county's offering middle school sports. If we don't have a facility that can accommodate the students who want to participate, puts the school system in a bad sport too. And I think you might add, you know, the Camp Washington small area plan, right? I mean, that's going to touch right up next to it, right? When you open the Fairfax County Parkway through the shopping center, you are going to change the traffic pattern in that area. And it's finding that. Is there a problem? Yeah, we spent a lot of time talking about the connection between Camp Washington North through a corridor that would end up at Kuttner.

Because right now, Kuttner is kind of a very, well, it's more lightly used kind of quasi-private neighborhood park. And it could be a thoroughfare connection at Camp Washington that invites more recreation for that. Make it a broader community asset. Okay. Okay, so we have something to work with. We have those initial four comments, the ones that we've added. And, sorry, didn't mean to step in. So, Chair Feather and I and Vice Chair Lockhart, if available, we'll get together this week and try to refine these. Get those out to you, give you a chance to look over them, hopefully this weekend. And then we'll package them up and have them finalized for the public hearing on January 26th. Our deadline will be an agenda package for the middle of next.

Yes, our agenda package is go to Tina on Tuesday. So, we're probably going to ask you to look at them over the weekend. And then we'll finalize them on Monday. Thank you all. Really good discussion. Okay. Thank you all. We will reconvene our regular meeting and go to the staff reports. Thank you again, Chair Feather and members of the Planning Commission. On January 6th, the City Council had a work session meeting. The only item was discussion of the Parks and Recreation Master Plan, which was on hiatus for quite a while. It's still in the phase of collecting information. Essentially, their consultant had some interview questions for City Council so they could provide feedback. So, we'll be following this project as it starts to reinitiate itself.

And we'll probably have some information before you in the next couple of months. Then tomorrow, City Council, a couple of items of interest. They'll be taking their final consideration on the Board and Commissioner Handbook. We talked about this back in the fall a couple of times. Chair Feather made some comments about it. Once that's adopted, then we will share it with all of you. I think, as Chair Feather stated, it's intended for new members, but we'd like to share it with you. Anyway, just to make sure we're all kind of on the same footing. They'll also be having a public hearing, no action needed on the Fern Street Connector Project. As you might recall, this was a project that was specifically identified in the Camp Washington Small Area Plan.

It's a pedestrian connection and it's had an engage page set up for a while. So, they'll be wrapping up the planning phase for this and moving toward construction. And additionally, there'll be consideration of additional funds and a water contract for the George Snyder Trail. This is also a project that's mentioned in the comprehensive plan. For your upcoming meeting on January 26th, we'll be having our public hearing on the Capital Improvement Program, as we've discussed. You will have a presentation on the Urban Forest Master Plan. You just received a presentation on that in December, as you may recall. But a public hearing is scheduled on this on January 27th with City Council. And we are going to ask the Planning Commission to provide a formal recommendation to them.

We won't necessarily need a public hearing. But the reason we're doing that is that there are recommendations in that plan that will affect the comprehensive plan. And ultimately, you will be asked to incorporate those recommendations into the comprehensive plan. But once the plan is adopted, you don't really have the opportunity to change it. So, we want to make sure that you are saying that you're okay with this plan. And then it will be adopted. And at some point, it will come back to you to be incorporated in the comprehensive plan. And then lastly, you'll receive a presentation on the annual report, as you always do with the second meeting of the year. And updates to the implementation guides.

And all that will be forwarded to City Council once you approve it. As we discussed during our CIP presentation, you will be presenting your recommendations on the CIP to City Council at their February 3rd work session. Take a look at your calendar. See if that's available for you. We're going to ask you to confirm who can come to that meeting at the next meeting on January 26th. And then February 9th, you received the email. This is a regular Planning Commission night. You'll be having a joint meeting with the Economic Development Authority. This will start at 6 p.m. It will be before our regularly scheduled meeting, which will then occur at 7 p.m. And we'll get back to you with more information about the topics that will be covered.

We're still working it out with them. So, that's all I have for our staff report tonight. Any questions for staff? Okay. Commission comments? Anything from you, Mr. McCarthy? No, sir. Mr. Cunningham? Congratulations on the re-election of our two leaders and Happy New Year. Glad to see everybody back. Thank you. Ms. Lockhart? Nothing for the group. Thank you. Nothing. Happy New Year. Nothing further from me. The Board of Architectural Review first meeting of the calendar year was canceled. So, I guess they'll be meeting next week, which I presume they will meet because that's the meeting that they elect their own chair and vice chair. But, so nothing to report from the bar as well. Happy New Year to you all.

Thank you for being. Sorry. Nothing from the FIG yet, by the way. Oh, nothing from the FIG. Yeah. Facilities and Interior. No, whatever. Thank you for stepping up to do that. We are adjourned. Thank you. Thanks. I have my first. Thank you. дедеде Thank you.